


Bad Blood

by decadent_mousse



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Angst with a happy-ish ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:13:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy finds out Matt's secret -- and it goes beyond being a masked vigilante with super-senses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [patster223](https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/gifts).



> This is based on an au me and [patster223](http://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223) came up with ages ago. I started writing it ages ago. And now, true to the pattern so far, I've finished it as a late, late birthday present. XD I it was worth the wait! <3

Foggy was more than a little drunk when he reached Matt’s apartment, but still not as drunk as he’d  _ like _ to be.  He couldn’t stop thinking about how much easier life would’ve been if he’d just been a butcher, like his mom had wanted.  Or, hell, if he’d stayed at Landman and Zack.  Not necessarily  _ better _ , but… easier.  Easier than trying to figure out why Matt got moodier and more distant by the day, easier than people he tried to help  _ dying _ because of him, easier than all of it.  

He definitely needed more alcohol, and he definitely needed more  _ Matt _ .  He knocked on the door.  

No answer.

That seemed to be the case with Matt  _ a lot _ lately, and it was just getting worse.  Even when Matt was there it was like he wasn’t really  _ there _ .  It was like being best friends with a ghost.  

“Matty, I really need you, buddy,” he said, loudly.  “Are you there?”

Still no answer.  

Then he heard a distant thump and a crash.  It had come from the other side of Matt’s door.  

_ That can’t be good. _

Matt could be clumsy, sure, but that didn’t sound like a clumsy kind of crash, that sounded like a “there’s an axe murderer in my apartment with me” kind of crash.  Before he even had time to think about it, he was already moving up the stairs and to the roof.  Matt never kept the door up there locked.  

~

The apartment was dark when he got inside, but the lights from outside danced around the living room and illuminated it enough for Foggy to see how  _ wrecked _ Matt’s place looked.  

His mouth went dry, and some dim part of his brain was screaming at him to get out and call the police, but if someone was  _ there _ in the apartment and  _ Matt  _ was there, then even if he called they might get there too late.  What if it was already too late?  What if Matt was hurt, or…?

“Matt?”

A figure stumbled out from the shadows of Matt’s room, and before Foggy could react to what he was seeing --  _ who _ he was seeing -- the masked vigilante fell to the ground.  Even in the shitty lighting of the apartment, Foggy could tell the guy was wrecked.  What had happened?  Why the hell was  _ this _ guy in Matt’s apartment?  Had he done something to Matt?

He nudged him warily to make sure he was actually unconscious, and that was around the time when he noticed he was actually  _ dead _ .  Or, at least, not breathing, which last time he checked was usually associated with being dead.  Which wasn’t that surprising, considering he was bleeding from just about every part of his body from the looks of it.  

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had just keeled over in Matt’s apartment and Matt was nowhere to be seen.  What the  _ hell _ .

He reached down to pull off the mask, because as fearful as he was for Matt’s safety, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to finally find out who this asshole was.  

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find, but  _ Matt’s  _ face definitely wasn’t it.  Some hysterical part of his brain went,  _ Oh, there he is. _   


“Matt?!”

His mind spun in a thousand different directions, starting with  _ Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen  _ and ending somewhere around  _ why is he not breathing?   _ At which point as unbelievable as that first revelation was, it pretty much stopped mattering as far as Foggy’s alcohol-addled brain was concerned.  

He dropped to his knees beside him and leaned over him.  There was so much blood.  Matt’s outfit was shredded all over the place, and it was hard to see any of his injuries through all the blood, but it was bad.  It was bad, and Matt was--

“Matt!  No, no, no.”  

He kept saying “no” over and over again to himself like it would make the whole situation less true -- less of a complete fucking  _ nightmare _ scenario.  Maybe it wasn’t happening.  Maybe he’d had one too many and passed out back at the bar.  Maybe this whole thing was just a product of his incredibly inebriated brain. 

He took a deep breath to try to calm himself down.  It didn’t work.  It actually made it kind of worse.  Okay, maybe he was completely misreading the situation.  He was freaked out because of the whole “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in Matt’s apartment” thing followed by the “holy shit, Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” thing, and between that and the alcohol, he probably wasn’t in any condition to eyeball someone’s breathing or not-breathing status.  Besides, Matt had been alive just a minute ago.  He wouldn’t have just dropped dead at Foggy’s feet, right?  

_ Well, actually _ \--

_You don’t get an opinion, logic._   


Foggy picked up his phone again, tears dripping down his face, and began to dial 911.  And that’s when Matt suddenly bolted upright, grabbed his arm, and nearly gave him a goddamn  _ heart attack _ .  

“Matt?!”

"Jesus, Matty," Foggy gasped, forgetting for half a second that he'd just found out his best friend was a masked vigilante.  "I need to call an ambulance."

"N-no!"

"You're bleeding!  Everywhere!  And I'm pretty sure your heart wasn’t beating a minute ago, that's not--"

"Foggy, don't--"

"You need--"

"I said no!" Matt lunged up off the floor towards him, and Foggy tried to stumble out of the way, dropping the phone.  He collapsed half on top of him.  "Call... call Claire..."

Foggy had so many questions.  Who was Claire?  How was he going to call someone he didn't even know?  Whoever she was, did she know about  _ this _ ?  Matt was in no condition to answer any of them, and Foggy was in no condition to  _ ask _ , because he was still trying to wrap his head around what was happening.

Because when Matt had yelled and lunged at him?  He was pretty sure he'd seen teeth.  Really, really sharp teeth.

~   


After some quick and really shaken detective work, Foggy managed to find the burner phone he’d seen Matt use a couple times before.  At the time he’d teased Matt about it, thinking it was a new girlfriend, but now he wasn’t so sure.  

The woman that turned up on Matt’s doorstep was pretty.  The kind of pretty that for Matt screamed “doomed” usually before the romance even had time to get off the ground.  She shouldered past him with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

"What the hell happened?"

"I-- I don't know.  He was like this when I got here."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not really?  He told me not to call 911, told me to call you instead, then he passed out.  Again."

"Again?"

"He'd passed out already once before that.  I thought--  He didn't have a  _ pulse _ ."

"Yeah, he still doesn't."

"Uh, that makes no sense.  You're a doctor, right?  You get how  _ little sense _ that makes?!"  He was starting to feel a little hysterical.  Had the whole world just completely turned upside down?  Had he entered the Twilight Zone?

"A nurse, actually, but yeah, I get it."  She looked Matt over, never taking her eyes off him.  He recognized that look.

_ Didn't work out, _ Matt's voice echoed in his head.

She opened her bag and Foggy wasn't sure what he expected her to pull out of it, as far as medical supplies went, but a blood bag wasn't it.

"What're you gonna do with that?"

"I'm not really sure.  I'm making this up as I go along."

"That doesn't seem very professional."

"Well, he defies pretty much everything I know about the human body, so I'm kinda fumbling around in the dark here."

That... seemed fair.  At least she seemed to know more about what the hell was going on than Foggy did, at this point.

~

Watching Matt bite at and suck on the blood bag was disturbing, and not just because of the fangs -- which were very visible and definitely not Foggy's imagination -- and not even because of the blood -- though that was pretty... yeah.  It was the  _ way _ he did it.  Like an animal more than a person.  He didn't feel like he was watching  _ Matt _ drink blood, he felt like he was watching something wearing Matt's face drink blood, and it was freaking him the hell out.  It felt like something he'd see on some animal documentary, only not, because vampires  _ didn't exist _ .  At least, until an hour ago he thought they hadn't.

The blood was gone pretty fast.  Matt had guzzled it like his life had depended on it, which--

"Is this going to help him?"

He was still pissed off and confused -- mostly confused -- but Matt was bleeding to death on the couch, so all of that was kind of secondary to the possibility of his best friend dying.  His best friend, who had  _ lied _ to him -- about a lot of things, apparently -- but was still his best friend.  This was still Matt.  Right?

"It worked last time," Claire said, as she tossed Matt another pack of blood the way a handler at Seaworld would toss a whale a fish.  He didn't want to ask how  _ she'd _ found out about all this or what the hell she'd ended up having to feed him "last time."  Actually, he did.  He did and he didn't.

God.  He was either too drunk to deal with this or not drunk enough.

~

"So, what, all that time in college, you were a--"

"More or less, yes."

"I don't-- I don't understand  _ any  _ of this, Matt.  I've seen the way you fight!  Your Dad was a boxer, he didn't teach you that."

"No.  You know my dad didn't want me to fight."

"He probably didn't want you drinking people's  _ blood _ , either, Matt!"

A shadow passed over Matt's face, and if Foggy hadn't been so pissed off he might have felt bad about it.

"When I was a kid, I was trained by an old blind man named Stick."

"You're shitting me."

"He-- he wanted people.  People with special abilities.  To train as soldiers for... something.  He never told me what."

"Sounds like a great guy."

"He was an ass, but there was something different about him.  I couldn't hear his heartbeat.  I never heard it, not once.  Back then, I thought-- maybe he had some way of hiding himself from my senses or something, but he didn't.  He just... didn't have one."

"Like you don't," Foggy said, and he couldn't keep the accusation out of his voice.

"Yes."

"Did you know when you fell over at my feet last night, I thought you were  _ dead _ ?"

Matt's brow furrowed.  "I'm sorry."

"You weren't breathing, either.  So all of that's normal?"  There wasn't anything normal about any of this.  He was feeling a little hysterical.  

Matt nodded wordlessly, looking down.  

"That makes no sense."  None of this made sense.  "You breathe, Matt.  I'm pretty sure I've seen you breathe."

"When I'm around... people, I make a conscious effort to do it, so I seem..."  He trailed off.

"Human.  Alive," Foggy said.  "Yeah, that's not creepy at all."

“Foggy--”

“You’ve been lying to me, all this time!”

It stung, it hurt.  Nothing made sense anymore.  

Matt looked upset, guilty -- for whatever good that did, at this point.  

“What should I have said?  ‘Hi, I’m Matt.  I got some chemicals splashed in my eyes when I was a kid that gave me heightened senses and oh, by the way, I’m a vampire.”

“Well, maybe not  _ lead _ with that.”

~

"Maybe this about you having an excuse to bite people.  Maybe you can't stop yourself."

The mental image of Matt prowling the night, hunting down criminals and drinking their blood, sounded like something out of a horror movie.

"I don't want to stop."

And Foggy had no idea what the hell to do with  _ that _ .  

~

He avoided Matt like the plague after that night, and it worked.  He was either way better at avoiding people than he thought he was, or Matt was avoiding him, too.  It was  _ good _ if he was, because Matt wasn’t his favorite person right now.  He wasn’t even sure what he’d say or do if he bumped into him.  

_ “Hey, Matt, how’s it going?  Drink any criminal’s blood lately?” _

He couldn’t reconcile the Matt he’d known all these years with the Matt he’d met last night, the Matt who went running across rooftops at night, viciously beat criminals, and apparently was also a vampire on the side.  He wasn’t sure who he was angrier at: Matt for lying to him this whole time, or himself for not  _ seeing _ it -- any of it.  How far up his ass had his head been that he’d  _ missed _ the part where his best friend had become some kind of vampire vigilante?

~

Karen was pissed off at both of them, and he couldn’t really blame her.  She was stuck right in the middle of things.  Part of him wanted to tell her what he’d found out -- he felt like she deserved to know, probably -- but even as pissed off as he was, he couldn’t betray Matt like that.  He also couldn’t keep avoiding him.  Even leaving the office had only done so much good -- Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t big enough for the two of them to dance around each other for the rest of their lives.  

That, and some small part of him wanted to reach out.  He  _ missed _ Matt.  No matter how angry he was, no matter what had happened between them, Matt was such a big part of his life that not having him there felt like a big piece of his life was just missing.

It wasn’t that hard to find him, when he finally decided to look.  He knew more about Matt’s haunts and habits than Matt realized he did -- though it was painfully obvious he still hadn’t known enough.  It occurred to him that if a guy with Matt’s talents didn’t want to be found, he probably wouldn’t have been.  That gave him something that felt a bit like hope when he walked into the gym.

Matt was hitting a punching bag like it had personally wronged him, over and over, without even slowing down or breaking a sweat.  He literally wasn't sweating.  Did vampires not sweat?  How had he gone this long without noticing that Matt didn't sweat?  Maybe he did when he was around other people.  Maybe he faked it like he apparently faked all other signs of being a living, breathing human being.  The idea of someone producing fake sweat to throw off suspicion was ridiculous, but so was pretty much everything that had happened since a masked vigilante showed up in town and started beating people up.  

They talked.  Mostly, Foggy talked and Matt kept hitting the punching bag, and he couldn’t help but wonder if super-strength was part of Matt’s vampire repertoire.  He half-expected the bag to just collapse the way he kept hitting it.  

There was no talking Matt out of going after Fisk, but that didn’t stop him from trying.     


“I don’t know if things can ever go back to the way they were.”

“No, but… maybe we could move forward.”  There was an earnest hopefulness in Matt’s voice that made Foggy’s heart flop around, but if Matt  noticed, he didn’t mention it.  

He wanted that.  He wanted to at least try.  No matter what was going on between them, they had important work to get done, and Matt meant enough to him that if they could find a way to move past all this crap… it was worth a shot. 


End file.
